


The Stirling and The Cold

by d__T



Category: Mad Max 1979
Genre: Blood and Gore, M/M, the "everything is the same except Bubba is a Weird Vampire" AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 12:57:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5005666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bubba is a sneaky thermal vampire.</p><p>A Stirling Engine is a simple, sometimes one cylinder, engine that generates mechanical energy from a temperature differential. It is very efficient, and can use almost any heat source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He wasn’t sure he was going to stay with this group. Another gang, another band of men viewing him as a hired gun. His fingers as cold as the metal of his Mauser tap, fall still, tap again and then finally remain still. He’s sure now, though. His new leader is wild: attire and schemes and words and hair, but his eyes are cunning and his touch provides more warmth to feed from than some of his kills do.

He stays, at first, because he finds that he can feed off these men without killing them. Little boosts that stretch the time between proper meals as his bond to them grows stronger. The two that get so high, they don’t notice when he takes from them, but they burn out so quickly when he does. But Toecutter, he stays warm even when Bubba is less careful than usual and leaves his fingertips tingling and wondering how a man can be so cold on the inside too. But still, he has to kill to stay strong and it’s harder to do that when he’s surrounded like this.

So sometimes he leaves, on his own. He’s not the only one to do so, and he always comes back. It’s to keep them safe.


	2. Chapter 2

Toecutter runs hot. Always has, will until the day he dies. He likes it that way, that when he lays hands on someone, his touch burns with more than just power. And his touch brings fear or lust or both into the blood of everyone he touches.

Except for Bubba. Bubba is, of course, different. Bubba remains cool under his touch, no rush of blood-borne emotion warming him. There’s a hunger that lives in the man, tamped down in the icy depths and when Toecutter touches him, the cold lingers in his fingers long after the encounter. Like winter sucking the soul out of summer; without malice or intention, but deadly all the same.

The strangeness does not go without thought- he wonders, idly, if Bubba is some sort of vampire or otherwise un-human. But it is of no matter, since Bubba is his man, his right hand, his lover with the faintest hint of a warm pulse in the big arteries in his neck and legs. A man is entitled to his secrets.

It makes sense the day he finds him wrist deep in a body so fresh it might have still been alive when he'd cut his hands into the abdominal cavity. The warmth radiates off the dead man into the air and soaks into Bubba's pale skin. He is not wholly surprised to find him like this.

“You do not need to hide from me.”

Bubba nods and pulls his hands free of the body, blood dripping from where it’s collected in the crevices of his nails. “They do not need to know that there’s a monster among them.”

Before he can wipe his hands clean, Toecutter steps forward and raises him up with a finger under his chin. “They know that I am the monster, and you are my hands.”

He takes a bloody hand in his own and lifts it to his lips. Pointed tongue cleans the darkening blood from fingertips and fingernails, and Bubba shivers when he is released. Not because he’s cold but because for a brief moment, his fingertips burn as if they’d been dunked in a bucket of hot water on a chill day.


	3. Chapter 3

They’re well into another gang's territory, and it’s polite not to kill when you’re this far in. Not if you don’t know who is under who’s protection. But Bubba’s weak, he’s pushed himself too far (again) and while his hands are still steady, he’s slow. His fingers are icy even after he’s been wearing his gloves, and when Toecutter touches him, it’s as if heat is being sucked from his body.

But there’s no easy inconspicuous mark for him to feed on here. And he knows he messed up this time and Toecutter lets him. Lets him fight himself until he caves and turns to him.

“Please.”

He holds the knife out to his Boss. Toecutter tugs his jacket off, rolls up a sleeve. Only then does he take the offered knife to make a cut in his forearm. The blood wells up, and the little run of it is swiped up on a thick finger. Bubba holds his hands out, palms up and Toecutter paints his palms in blood fresh and bright. Rubs it in until it settles dark into the cracks of his skin and Bubba’s eyes roll back.

But only for a moment before the ice is back.

The shallow cut is pinched shut, sealed with a finger run along it and the sleeve pushed back down to cover it, nevermind that all their hands are rusty now.

“Come here.”

Obediently, Bubba steps closer. Toecutter hauls him into a kiss, forceful and hot. And Bubba takes that heat for himself.


	4. Chapter 4

Toecutter’s lying beside him, naked and bloody around the hands and teeth. Bubba thinks he’s beautiful and submits to Toecutter playing with the wounds he’d made with only the smallest of grumbles.

The blood under his fingers is lethargic and slow. “You’re still hungry.”

“Not for now.” They both know he’s lying, but the truth in it is that he can put off a kill a little longer now, push himself a little harder again. And right now, that’s good enough. They will have time to hunt soon, and choose well.


	5. Chapter 5

He feels more alive than he has in weeks. But he’s paid a price for his carelessness. He’s considering running in shame, but he’s more loyal than that. No need to layer betrayals and affronts, not when his Boss is rolled up in his silver blanket in broad daylight.

He bums tea off of Diabando, that man has everything and he sets to making it. For the first time in a very long time, he has to make sure he doesn’t burn himself, momentarily vulnerable to temperature. But when he presents the over-hot steel cup to Toecutter, the man takes it in both hands without flinching.

He sits beside him, wishing he could do more, but all he can do is own his mistake and watch the blue recede from under Toecutter’s fingernails. He hadn't meant to take that much, and being hungry is no excuse, not in his mind. But he has no way to give the warmth he's stolen back.


	6. Chapter 6

They’re in a house, it’s theirs now. It wasn’t before, but with Bubba cold and keen at the door and Toecutter and Starbuck and Diabando working their way through the house, nobody will contest who it belongs to now. At least, nobody who doesn’t wish to join the corpses in the hallways.

“I have gift for you, Bubba.”

Bubba turns from his post, and follows Toecutter through the stained halls. Past Diabando dragging the badly mutilated body of a man down and out. His eyes stick briefly where it looks like man had tried to defend himself from Diabando’s ax and instead took Starbuck’s long knife to the throat. Looks nearly decapitated, and Bubba wants to sink his hands deep into that cut. He’s so hungry, he can feel it pulling at him harder than even the torture of listening to his brothers murdering their way through the house.

Toecutter tugs him away, a wild grin on his face that promises even better than that. Led to a room near the end of the hall, ‘Cutter ushers him through the door. The first thing he sees is a floozie cowering and whimpering in a corner. She’s irrelvant the second he sees the man on the floor. Man would be a generous description now, and Toecutter’s always been an artist with what he does: the man is still alive.

“He’s all yours.”

The skin is flayed back, the muscle over his chest severed and pulled away. His ribs had been left intact, a shell fragile against the corpse-cleaver. But Toecutter is a considerate man, and provides for his men. Bubba cracks back the ribs over the man’s weakly beating heart himself. The heart is well wrapped, a gift suspended from lifelines, so he sinks his hands into the cavity and takes it for himself.

The warmth crawls up his arms and into his bones like liquor and adrenaline. He takes his knife and cuts the rubbery and resistant aorta and pulmonary artery off the man’s heart. Slowly, ever slower, the man’s heart pumps his blood supply through Bubba’s hands and into his chest cavity.

He puts the heart back when it stops, the man long dead. Stands, and finds Toecutter watching him with an expression somewhere between admiration and arousal.


	7. Chapter 7

“Easy, I know what I’m doing.”

It’s his second pass and he knows he’s better than this. He’s waited too long and as his hands itch for even the blood seeping from the prey's knee, he knows for certain that Toecutter was making him beg. Teaching a lesson, as he does, letting Bubba break himself against himself. Trusting him to not fuck it up. He knows for certain now that he fucked it up.

He pulls the motorcycle up under him, makes the run. But it does not save him from the shotgun blast and he slides away. There’s a splinter of warmth around every pellet in his body and blood sluggishly leaking. He wonders if the cold will save him.

The next thing he feels is talons in his back and the coarse burbling of scavenger-birds discussing his fate from far too close.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lil headcanon on tumblr, and then I vomited like a thousand words all over the floor.


End file.
